1. Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a refrigerator that controls driving of a load to reduce power consumption and/or electric charges and a control method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A refrigerator is an appliance that keeps food and drinks fresh for a long period of time. The refrigerator stores food and drinks in a frozen state or in a refrigerated state depending upon kinds of the food and drinks.
The refrigerator repeatedly performs a refrigeration cycle including compression, condensation, expansion, and evaporation through a compressor, condenser, expansion valve, and evaporator mounted in the refrigerator, and maintains the temperature of a storage compartment at freezing temperature or refrigerating temperature using cool air heat-exchanged by the evaporation of the refrigeration cycle.
The refrigerator has been diversified with improvement of a standard of living, and the capacity of the refrigerator has been increased to store an increased number of goods. Also, the refrigerator has various functions to improve user convenience.
Although the refrigerator provides user convenience, the refrigerator consumes a large amount of power due to increased capacity and various functions thereof, which makes the cost burden too heavy for users in connection with the increase of electric charges.
As power consumption of other electric instruments increases in addition to the refrigerator, it may be necessary to develop energy sources and generate energy. To this end, additional construction of power plants has been proposed. However, such additional construction of power plants may not be desirable in view of construction costs, maintenance costs, and environmental problems. For this reason, technologies to restrict power consumption have been developed.
That is, a next-generation power network in which IT technology is connected to the existing power network so that a utility company and a consumer exchange information in real time in two ways to optimize energy efficiency, i.e. a smart grid concept, has been introduced.
The refrigerator, to which the smart grid concept is introduced, receives information regarding power price from the utility company in real time, and controls a specific function to be on or off based on the received information regarding power price, thereby reducing power consumption.
In the case of a refrigerator, if the refrigerator controls the specific function to be on or off based on the power price, the refrigerator may not efficiently perform a function desired by a user or may not perform a function related to performance improvement with the result that the performance of the refrigerator may be lowered.